...Enough Was Enough

It's got to stop.  I keep catching myself and having to tell myself off.

Here's the thing-  We've been here for a month now (I know!) and ever since we started work I've been encountering this problem.  Leaving.  I know it's not until August and it should be at the very back of my mind at the moment.  But I just can't help it.

Multiple times a day I think of how much of a connection I feel we've made with the residents of the home already.  And this means that multiple times a day I think of just how agonising it's going to be when August rolls around and we have to say our final “Ciao!”s.

It's driving me nuts!  I don't want anything stopping me from enjoying every second I have in Chile and giving my all to the people we work with.

So stop it Ellen!  Go out there and drink in everything Chile has to offer!  Go and sing and dance and play with those kids like you never have before!  Take every doubt you have about getting “too attached” and throw caution to the wind!  Admit that you love the people you work with and prove it to yourself and them every day!  This is your one and only chance, so grab it with both hands, start running and never look back!

Ok, that's it.  Enough with the nagging thoughts of leaving.  From now on it's living in the moment all the way!

Thank you blog readers for giving me an audience to my rants :)  Here's a cute picture to say thank you:

...I Saw The Sights

I think I better hurry up and write these 'little things' posts, as  the little things are already becoming normal to me!  The other day, I looked out of the window on the bus and something was odd.  Then I realised – it didn't look different any more.  It was as if I see a similar view everyday....because I do!  I guess that means the holiday period is over and I am now getting down to the business of living, working and breathing in Chile.

I know I'm going to see new things all the time when I am here, but here's a few of the every day SIGHTS that are becoming part of my day-to-day view of Chile:

1        Flies.  I hate flies.  With a burning passion.  But I am very quickly getting used to seeing them everywhere, all the time.  I often wake up in the morning with a fly on my nose and we learnt almost immediately that any food you leave unattended for even a second has to be covered with a napkin or towel.  I've forgotten what it feels like to eat a meal without waving one hand around to keep the flies at bay.  When we first saw the cafeteria, I was shocked and disgusted by the number of flies all over the tables.  But now there's flies all over our house too and I have accepted that they are here to stay, at least for the summer.

2        Ants.  Yes, another insect.  Ants aren't actually a new sight for me, as it was a constant battle to keep them out of the kitchen in Hawaii too.  But then my Mum dealt with them, and now I have to!  We've banished them from our house now, after waging war on the colonies that had moved into our kitchen and bathroom.  But they are still all over the trees in our garden, and will quickly return if the smallest crumb of food is left lying around.

3        Smog.  We're not in Santiago city, so I don't think the smog affects us as badly.  But on 'smog days' it almost obscures our view of the mountains and makes for beautiful, vibrant sunsets.  Even when it's not a 'smog day', there is usually a wavering band of smog just above the mountain tops.

4        Street dogs.  I know I spoke about the noise dogs make last time, but this is a whole other dimension!  Firstly, I should say that I love dogs.  Always have, always will.  I can't stand seeing a lost dog on our street, never mind a skeletal, mangy thing in the middle of the road. This is a sight that I was well prepared for, coming to Chile.  I have passed loads of slinky street dogs in the past 3 weeks and it hadn't really affected me at all...until Sunday.  On our way back from doing our grocery shopping in Colina, Mhairi spotted the most heartbreaking sight.  3 tiny puppies by the side of the road.  They were beside the box that they had obviously been left in and were whimpering their little hearts out.  1 was in a very bad way and the other 2 were wandering out into the road.  After a lot of convincing from level-headed Katie, we admitted that we couldn't take 3 random puppies home and tore ourselves away.  Later on, me and Mhairi had gone for a cycle and called in where we'd seen the puppies on our way home.   The ill one was dead and there was no evidence of the other two.  I just hope some kind hearted person took them home.  I know this happens, because Mable is a “stray”, yet she always has food,water and a place to sleep.  And since we've been here, another dog has arrived.  One day we spotted a black, leggy puppy scampering around the home's grounds.  Since then we've seen her (it could be a boy...) almost every day.  She's a skinny little mongrel who's missing the occasional bit of hair, but she's very sweet.  We've named her Rosie and she's already recognising it when we call her.  I hope she's allowed to stay and grows up around the niños, she would be one hell of a therapy dog! 

Rosie and Mhairi:

5        Missing teeth.  The majority of the residents in the home are missing teeth and the remaining ones are rotting away.  This seems to be true of all the residents over a certain age.  This is either because the younger ones haven't had time to lose teeth, or because dental hygiene has become more important in the last 20 years.  I think it's probably the latter, so hopefully this is one sight that won't last too much longer.  

6        Watermelons.  I have seen more watermelons in the past few weeks than I had seen in my whole life.  This is a good thing, because I LOVE watermelon.  There's nothing better on hot, dry day.  We get them a few times a week with our lunch at the home and every fruit stall is piled high with the beasts.

7        Dust.  The dust in this part of Chile is very fine and grey.  There is a thin layer of it covering everything.  Leaves, cars, surfaces, windows, everything.  We sweep our floor regularly, but still end up with black feet.  Even the water in our swimming pool turns grey pretty quickly. So if you pay a visit, it's not that we have shoddy housekeeping skills, we just have dust! I'm hoping that as the rain arrives, this dust invasion will cease! 

There are loads more, and I might just do a second part to this post, but for now these are some of the things that were new at first, but are fast becoming as common as the rain back home :)
Have a nice weekend everyone!

...The Windows Shook

We officialy felt our first tremour last night.  The house did 2 little shimmies. Me and Anna were freaked out for about 30 seconds, before our thoughts returned to sleep (it was 2:01am).  But Katie and Mhairi got themselves all in a twist and we ended up pushing me and Katie´s beds together so we could all pile in.  Most uncomfortable night ever.  Mhairi even stole my pillow, ungrateful child!
But despite the lack of sleep, we had another AMAZING day at work today, and our weekend went well too.  Will write a proper post at some point this week.  Hasta luego! xx

...Everything Was New

There's a lot of little things that make living in a new country such a big transition.  So I'm going to look some of the little things I've noticed since we got here.

Firstly, the new SOUNDS:

Music and voices from the neighbours and the swimming pool across the road at ALL hours of the day.  The music is reggaeton (?) and it was cool to begin with, but now we've had just about enough of it thank you very much!  It's 10x worse when there's a party going on (woke up at 4:30am the other night to sound of the music blaring), which is quite often at the minute, as it's the summer holidays.  I don't think it helps that we're used to having dinner at 7:30ish and going to bed around 11, which is when the Chileans are having dinner!

Animals- Dogs, dogs and more dogs!  Happy dogs, bored dogs, angry dogs, sad dogs, lonely dogs, excited dogs, defensive dogs, stray dogs, owned dogs!  I feel like I'm writing a Dr Seuss book! 

And there's the cockerel in the morning, the flies everywhere in the morning, afternoon and evening and the birds outside the window.

Cars on the gravel drive up to the home, the track over our hedge and the main road beyond that.

The leaves on the trees rustling in the wind.  I've never lived RIGHT next to so many trees before.

Every noise any of the girls makes in our house, it's compact and open plan!

Chileno (Chilean Spanish).  I'm already used to not understanding most of the conversations that are going on around me.  Hopefully it won't be long before I can catch more of what's going on.  I can already understand loads more than when we arrived and can say most things I need to to the kids.

At the hogar (home):   “Tia! Tia! Tia!”,  “Hola Tia!”,  “Bueno Dia!” (Chilean accent often leaves off S's), “Como esta?”, “Ciao Tia!”,  “Mañana!”, “Hasta Mañana Tia!” 

(Occasionally all these phrases one after the other!)

And of course lots of shouts and cries and laughter from the 200ish residents.

Wolf whistles and horn beeps.  Yup, it was inevitable. 4 white girls walking/cycling around a small Latin American town.  I can ignore it when it comes from cars driving past, as it's not all that different from home in the summer!  But I have to bite my tongue when it's a bunch of kids, usually younger than us, standing on a street corner and doing it as we go past, every time.  Aaaaarrrrgh!  Drives me nuts.  I think we all expected it to some degree, but we were expecting the local girls to get a bit of it too and we weren't really prepared for it to happen literally every couple of minutes when we're outside the school compound!  Oh well, I guess I'll just have to keep biting my tongue and maybe even learn to take it as a compliment.  Or maybe I'll just learn some really nasty Chileno slang :)

Still loving (just about) every minute of it!  And already thinking how impossible it's going to be to tear myself away from this place when our 7 months are up. <3

Please note the beginnings of a tan :)

...We Moved In

I have been keeping a really detailed diary every day so far, but I won't bore you with all the details.  If you want to know anything else, please feel free to ask.

The highlights of our first week in Chile:

1.      We arrived!  It was such a relief to finally arrive in Santiago.  I had been a little worried that I might not get the whole “experience” in Chile, as people kept telling me that it is the most European country in South America.  But those thoughts evaporated as soon as we pulled away from the airport!  At this time of year, Santiago is really dry, so there's not much colour in the plants.  But the houses make up for that.  Most are painted bright colours and there's graffiti EVERYWHERE.  As for the rules of the road....I have no idea.  So far, we have worked out that when the green man shows to pedestrians, the equivalent of a flashing amber light is showing to the cars.  So you can't assume that it's safe to cross!  Undertaking happens all the time, as does tailgating, slamming on the brakes and driving on the wrong side of the road.  Oh, and walking in the middle of the highway :/

        On our first trip to Santiago from Colina, we also saw goats and piglets walking down the road.  So I definitely do not feel like I've come to a clone of Europe.  I'm definitely in South America!

4.      We moved into our house!  Our little yellow casa already feels like home. 

We have 3 bedrooms, 2 with beds in them.  Katie and I share a room and Mhairi and Anna are in the other.  Our spare room has been turned into a walk in wardrobe (due to lack of storage space)/bike shed (they've lent us 3)/underwear drying room (we didn't really want to hang our pants in the garden for the world to see).  We have a little bathroom with a shower, toilet and sink, a teeny kitchen (fridge/freezer, cooker, sink) and a living/dining room.  We've been given wooden chairs and a bench, which we put our quilts on as throws.  We also have a table and some school chairs (that you'd pay a fortune for in a vintage shop at home).  Oh, and of course there is our 30 INCH TV.  It is actually a very useful learning tool for Spanish and we watch the news on it.  And today we got A SWIMMING POOL.  And no, we don't have a washing machine or wardrobes, but who needs them when you have a pool?!  I think it must have been donated to the home, but they already have a big pool that the residents use whenever they want.  So I guess they thought we might like it!  We walked into work this morning and they said that Tio was going to fix the swimming pool by the gates and put it in our garden, if we wanted it....what do you say to that?!  Our garden is pretty big, but even so, the pool is now quite a prominent feature on our front lawn!  We will fill it later, after the sealant on the cracks has dried.  It isn't actually big enough to swim in, but I think it'll still get a lot of use in this weather (been over 30 degrees every day since we got here).

5.      We started work.  We haven't done too much work in our settling in week, as there has been lots of things to tick off the to-do list.  We spent Tuesday in the kids' (about 4-14 years old) house, drawing and playing with them.  After lunch, there was a birthday party for some of the boys, so we stuck around for a bit and met the youngest resident of the home, who was turning 2 that day.  I have to admit that my heartstrings were given a really good tug when we met her and saw how some of the older residents reacted to her.  She is like the communal baby and everyone wanted to look after her! 

            On Wednesday we did art with 3 of the more capable kids.  Well, I say art, it was a bit of a free for all, but I came well prepared for that after the little bit of experience that I've had working with kids that have learning difficulties.  I think we all enjoyed it and the little boy that I walked back to the house stood at the door waving as we walked away. Aaaaagh!  I wanna take them all home!  (Don't worry Mum, I won't).  After lunch we had our first cooking lesson with the older, more independent residents who might be moving into their own house.  We cooked pasta, so it wasn't the most thrilling lesson, but it was spiced up a little by a lovers' tiff that was going on between 2 of them!  And they seemed very proud of their pasta, which they were going to have for dinner.  We didn't work on Thursday, as we were in Santiago trying to sort out our ID cards (every Chilean resident has to have one).  And on Friday we only worked in the morning for some reason that was beyond our understanding.  So it was “art” again with 4 kids.  We did actually manage to produce 3 pictures this time though.  To be honest, as long as the kids are enjoying themselves, I think we're doing our job.     By the way, I think I have found my favourite, but no, I'm not going to tell you who it is :)

6.      We had no water.  Ok, so this wasn't exactly a HIGHLIGHT of our week, but it was certainly a big part of it!  We didn't have any running water for 2 days, which feels like a loooooooot longer when you're living in this heat!

7.      We met Gustavo.  He's the pet llama.  Need I say more?

Ok, that's probably enough writing for now.  Will try and post again next week! xx

...We Travelled To The Other Side Of The World

I wrote this on Tuesday, but haven't had time to post it until now:

I've finally found time to write an update!  Sorry if it's a bit long, but quite a lot has happened since Thursday!

Our flight left Heathrow around 8:30 pm.  I said goodbye to my brother that morning and finalised my packing.  The only important thing that I've realised I forgot to pack (so far) is my sunglasses.

Then I went for a little walk with the dog and my parents and said goodbye to the hound and the house before getting in the car for the 3 hour drive to the airport.

There we met the 3 other girls and various members of their families.  We checked in and went to get something to eat.  I think the parents were quite comforted by the fact that us girls all sat together, chatting away.  Well, I hope they were comforted and didn't feel shunned!

We all said goodbye and were surprised by the absence of tears.  Although we all had pangs later in our journey. 

Our first flight was from Heathrow to Sao Paulo and took about 12 hours.  Yuck is all I can say.  There is only so many films you can watch back to back.  I watched Aladdin (in Latin Spanish:), The Bucket List and Chocolat (which I seem to watch every time I'm on a plane). 

We got to Sao Paulo about 7:30 am local time.  We waited around for an hour or two before hearing our names on the tannoy.  Panicking that we had missed our flight or something, we rushed up to the gate where they told us that our flight was delayed by 4 hours and we were issued with food and phone vouchers.  We messed around for a while trying to contact various people to let them know about the delay before finally getting through to someone at PT.  Then it was just a case of waiting around until the plane we were supposed to be getting arrived from Lima.

Airports are fun:

It eventually did, about 5 or 6 hours after we were first told that it was delayed.  We sat on the plane  and started taxiing, when all of a sudden all the light and noises died....The captain announced that there was a technical problem and we had to return to the stand.  It took about 40 minutes for it to be fixed, 40 minutes of sitting in a plane in Brazilian summertime with no air conditioning.  Fun times.

It was about a 3 ½ hour flight to Santiago.  When we arrived, we had to queue at immigration, but there was no problems with any of our paperwork.  Yay!

We went to get our luggage and the one of the customs' sniffer dogs indicated on one of our bags.  Thankfully this was only because it had an orange in it, which we had to fill out paperwork for and declare at customs.  What a fuss over a tangerine!

We finally got out of arrivals and found the taxi driver who took us to the hostel in Santiago that we would be staying in that night.  We were expecting to meet a representative of PT when we arrived, but no one was there, so we paid for the taxi and the hostel and sprawled on our beds and tried to collect our thoughts and believe that we were in Chile and will be for the next 7 months.  Later, one of our representatives arrived, reimbursed us for the taxi and the hostel and took us out to dinner, where he explained a bit more about our project.

The next morning, we were picked up by a member of staff of the Chilean charity that we are working for and her friend (who studied in Manchester, small world!) and driven to Colina, our home town for the next 7 months.  On the short drive we saw emergency shelters constructed after the earthquake, and the remnants of bridges destroyed in it which reminded me that this country was struck by disaster not so long ago.

At the home we were met by Cecilia, the director and Tio (Uncle), the guard.  They showed us around our little house and made sure that we were happy with it all.  We are, we've already stuck our pictures up and started putting our own stamp on our little yellow casa.

Then we walked up to the home and were met at the gate by two little girls who grabbed our hands and walked with us up to the main entrance.

We were completely overwhelmed when we first walked in, surrounded by people kissing our cheeks (Chilean greeting) and shouting “Tia, Tia!”.  Tia means Auntie and is what we and the other staff are called by the kids (and adults) who live in the home.

We went back to the house, had lunch and unpacked our bags.  We spent the rest of the day enjoying the sun and letting everything sink in.

Dinner was overwhelming again.  We walked into the canteen and were immediately surrounded by flies and children clamouring for our attention.  We weren't really hungry and didn't particularly enjoy our first meal here.  Looking back, I think it wasn't really the food, but everything.  Luckily, 2 ex-residents, who now work in the home took us under their wing and started shoving people out of the door (and floor length windows).  After our first week here, we have established some boundaries, one of which is no kids in the canteen when we're trying to eat! 

I have started writing a summary of our first week, but won't be able to post that until this weekend, so hold on!

That's all I've got time for tonight, but will try to post quite regularly.  We're loving it so far!